COLSTRIP, Mont. — After several years of taking a beating from the poor economy, new pollution rules and a flood of cheap natural gas, the coal industry was on the rebound this year as mining projects moved forward in the Western United States and demand for the fuel began to rise, especially in Asia.

Coal cuts in South Carolina

The shift away from coal is playing out among power utilities in South Carolina.

Accelerating its shutdown schedule for aging coal-fired power units, S.C. Electric & Gas announced last month it will close two units at its Canadys Station power plant near Walterboro by Dec. 31, four years ahead of schedule.

The Cayce-based utility had planned to convert the Colleton County generators to natural gas as an interim measure before retiring them in 2017. It changed its mind after re-evaluating that plan.

Three of those were at Canadys, with one already closed. Two at its McMeekin Plant near Irmo will be converted to natural gas by 2015 before being shut down by the end of 2018.

Another unit at the Urquhart Plant near Aiken that was converted to gas last year will be closed by 2018.

Santee Cooper also is reducing its reliance on coal.

For the first time in its history, the state-owned utility shut down four units that burn the fossil fuel, including two at the Jefferies Generating Station in Moncks Corner, on Dec. 31.

But almost overnight, coal is back on the defensive, scrambling to stave off a dark future amid President Barack Obama’s renewed push to rein in climate change.

The proposal, with its emphasis on cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from new and existing power plants, would put facilities like the 2,100 megawatt Colstrip electricity plant in eastern Montana in regulators’ cross hairs. That has spin-off implications for the massive strip mines that dot the surrounding arid landscape of the Powder River Basin and provide the bulk of the nation’s coal.

Montana’s sole member of the U.S. House of Representatives bluntly declared that the administration had decided to “pick winners and losers” in the energy sector with its plan.

“He wants to move toward shutting down the coal industry,” Republican Rep. Steve Daines said of the president.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and representatives of the Environmental Protection Agency rejected claims that the administration’s plan would exclude coal. They pointed to billions of dollars being spent by the government on technologies to decrease emissions by capturing and storing carbon dioxide from coal plants.

Yet widespread application of those technologies is years away, and Obama made clear in announcing his proposal last month that he intends to halt the “limitless dumping of carbon pollution” from power plants. He directed the Environmental Protection Agency to craft rules to make that happen.

Packing the RV

The Colstrip plant, which dominates the skyline of a coal-centered town by the same name, burns about 10 million tons of coal a year from a nearby mine and provides power to customers as far away as Seattle.

According to the EPA, the plant churned out more than 15 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2011, the latest year for which data was available. That’s roughly equivalent to the emissions from about 3 million cars running for a year.

On Tuesday, as Colstrip’s towering smokestacks poured out a constant plume of steam and smoke into otherwise blue skies, pipefitter Joe Ashworth, 60, was nearby packing up his RV. He spent the past two months working on a maintenance project at the plant. The traveling union worker said people in the coal industry were nervous that efforts to curb emissions could cost jobs and drive up electricity prices.

“Go green, sure. But do you have an electrical vehicle that will pull my trailer so I can make a living?” he asked.

Despite a frequently heard boast that the state has more coal than anywhere else in the U.S., antipathy toward the administration’s plan is not universal in Montana. One of Daines’ predecessors, former Rep. Pat Williams, said late last month that warming temperatures pointed to a “doomsday” scenario if carbon emissions were not addressed.

Others maintain that the worries over lost jobs are overstated. On Tuesday, the Natural Resources Defense Council released a report titled “Less Carbon, More Jobs, Lower Bills” that details new jobs that would be created because of all the work needed to retrofit plants such as Colstrip. The environmental group said its analysis of the administration’s plan shows 3,600 jobs in Montana alone.

Among utilities elsewhere in the country, the trend away from coal has been well under way over the past several years, including in South Carolina. Rock-bottom natural gas prices — coupled with huge price-tags to clean up mercury and other pollutants from burning coal — drove many utilities to simply switch fuels.

Those pressures finally started to ease this year: Demand from utilities started to rise as coal stockpiles dwindled. Proposals for major new mines by Cloud Peak Energy and Arch Coal, Inc. gained traction. And coal finally started to reclaim its competitive edge as gas prices rose.

Not optional

Colstrip is among those plants that have remained open, in part due to heavy capital investments. That includes $88 million spent on air pollution controls since 2000, according to PPL Montana, which co-owns the 360-employee plant and operates it on behalf of five other utilities.

Carbon dioxide controls would cost far more: $430 million to install the equipment, plus annual operating and maintenance costs of $900 million, according to a PPL study from several years ago.

That would equate to $53 for every ton of coal burned, the company said. That’s about five times the price of the fuel itself in the nearby Powder River Basin, according to pricing information from the Energy Information Administration.

Still, PPL representatives and others in the industry see room for maneuvering before carbon capture becomes mandated. Key details of the administration’s plan still must be worked out, including the scope of emissions cuts and their timetable. The broad goal is to achieve a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2020.

Assuming the goal doesn’t shift, the key question will be how those reductions are spread among different sectors of the economy, from transportation and power production, to manufacturing.

Even without the president’s latest announcement, the Supreme Court ruled five years that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants that the government must regulate, said Quin Shea, vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities in the U.S. and has worked with the administration on the climate issue.

“A lot of our friends in other industries and states and on (Capitol) Hill miss the fact that this isn’t optional,” Shea said. “At the end of the day, we will be protecting as much coal as we can.”

Get more news delivered to your inbox:

Enlarge Traveling union worker Joe Ashworth takes a break from packing his RV after fininshing a maintenance project at the Colstrip Steam Electric Station in Colstrip, Mont. President Barack Obama’s climate change plan has Ashworth and others in the coal industry nervous about more power plant closures. Matthew Brown/AP

Traveling union worker Joe Ashworth takes a break from packing his RV after fininshing a maintenance project at the Colstrip Steam Electric Station in Colstrip, Mont. President Barack Obama’s climate change plan has Ashworth and others in the coal industry nervous about more power plant closures.

Comments

Notice about comments:

The Post and Courier is pleased to offer readers the enhanced ability to comment on stories. Some of the comments may be reprinted elsewhere in the site or in the newspaper. We ask that you refrain from profanity, hate speech, personal comments and remarks that are off point.

We do not edit user submitted statements and we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. If you find a comment that is objectionable, please click the X that appears in the upper right corner when you hover over a comment. This will send the comment to Facebook for review. Please be reminded, however, that in accordance with our Terms of Use and federal law, we are under no obligation to remove any third party comments posted on our website. Read our full terms and conditions.